Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Despite the long wait for the development on this title to finish, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has proved well worth the wait. I haven't had more than 10 hours in the game so far, but already I can say it is less buggy, more intuitive, and just as deep if not deeper than Morrowind. FYI, I didn't play more than 30 hours into Morrowind, because it kept locking up on my Xbox even though the game wasn't scratched and no other games skipped. Just as background - that was my only Elder Scrolls experience till now. On my PC (currently with a 6800GT and a 2.6Ghz Athlon 64 with 1 Gig of DDR400), load times between areas are short - maybe 5 to 10 seconds TOPS - and when moving through outside areas loading is non-existent. Definitely much better done than Morrowind. The graphics are stunning. The auto-detection sets everything for you, and doesn't allow you to make many changes. I'm sure there will be ways to force higher settings on lower cards later on, but the gameplay was smooth and stunningly gorgeous, and I expected no less than that. Indoor and city textures are best, smoke effects are absolutely amazing - ultra-realistic. Flames are also brilliant. The night sky and moon are a sight to behold, and the vegetation doesn't extend to the horizon, but looks great as it appears, and smoothly fills in as you cross the terrain. The voice acting and sound effects are done brilliantly. If you have 5.1 surround, it won't be wasted on this title. Patrick Stewart's voice acting work at the beginning is a wonderful and fitting introduction to the quality of this game overall. Bethesda really does seem like the Shakespeare of game developers to me, after only a short time with this game. Travel has been simplified. Once you hear about a city, you can instantly travel there. Of course, taking the "long way" leads you past all kinds of ruins, harvestable vegetation, random farmhouses, dungeons, caves, and wild animals. So whichever you choose, you're in for a treat. Inventory space is easily managed, equipping items is quick and simple, and setting hotkeys is also easy, useful, and also necessary. The tutorial is sufficient, and paced slow enough to allow you to get your brain around each feature as you go through it. However, they do not explain to you how to level up - or if they did I missed it - and I had to find out about travel from a review online. So those two things I think could be introduced more obviously. Other than that, I found crafting and lockpicking to be enjoyable and useful, and the process of selecting your class/race/etc was well layed out. Character customization options seem literally infinite, and I must have spent 25 minutes designing my character's face. Of course, you can just hit random and skip that if it's not your thing. As stated, I'm not too far in yet, but it's bigger and better than Morrowind, looks better than just about ANYTHING out there, and they immediately set you off into your first quests and on the road to greatness. On PC you can't run HDR and AA at the same time, but even on a ~$200 card like my 6800GT it looks gorgeous, runs smooth, and I expect someone to figure out how to run both on a PC eventually anyway. To be quite honest, except for the few items I somehow missed during the tutorial, I can't say enough good things about this game. It's a must-have for any RPG fan. **** To clarify, because some people are spreading misinformation about this title, it is possible to remap your controls on the PC. Also, F1 through F4 open each of your menus, from character sheet to inventory, spells, accomplishments, etc. As a tech writer by profession, I find it amusing that those who are having a hard time with the controls on PC have simply failed to read the manual, or RTFM as we say in my line of work. Personally, I just started pushing buttons in game and found them all in a matter of minutes. Most can be remapped (I always play eadf instead of wasd), including the spell casting hotkey, and I would be willing to bet that with a little diligence someone will find a way to modify the config file so that the rest of them (F1-F4 I believe are locked) can be remapped.